Two weeks after the Dallas Cowboys allowed the contract of head coach Jason Garrett to expire back in January of 2020, he was hired by the New York Giants as their offensive coordinator.
Garrett was excited and grateful for the opportunity, but several in his circle didn’t share in that optimism. One such Negative Nancy came by way of retired Cowboys legend and current NFL analyst, Michael Irvin.
Irvin believed the Giants were a lost cause — something beyond Garrett’s scope of repair — and that the coach would merely be spinning his wheels in East Rutherford.
“I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t know about that one, man,'” Irvin recalled to Newsday. “He’s such a fighter. He’s a winner. He wanted to go and do it. He said ‘I’m a coach, it’s what I do. I can fix it. I can fix it.’ I said to him then, ‘I don’t know if you can fix it.’
“And I’m saying this to you now: ‘I don’t know if I can fix it.'”
Irvin certainly couldn’t fix the team but that’s a different sidebar. Garrett, of course, would have had much better odds at fixing the Giants given his extensive experience as a coach, but that’s not how things panned out.
Garrett was let go midway through his second season as Giants’ offensive coordinator, and justifiably so. The offense took a major step back from Pat Shurmur’s bunch and were barely functioning on an NFL level. But even following his departure, things only got worse.
In the end, not only was Garrett fired, but head coach Joe Judge and much of his staff were sent packing, too.
So, how can the Giants be fixed? That’s a question Irvin still can’t answer even after Garrett’s attempt.
“Dude,” Irvin said, “we don’t have the time to go through all of that.”
Irvin may not, but general manager Joe Schoen and head coach Brian Daboll do. They’re now tasked with doing what Dave Gettleman, Judge and Garrett could not.
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